Nov. 21, 2013
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Kelly Clarkson and Brandon Blackstock. / Win McNamee Getty Images

by Andrea Mandell, USA TODAY

by Andrea Mandell, USA TODAY

Bridget Jones once famously quipped that as a singleton, she supposed "it doesn't help that underneath our clothes our entire bodies are covered in scales."

It turns out that newly married (and pregnant!) Kelly Clarkson, 31, used to feel the same pangs of loneliness as our favorite single lady.

"I was single for almost seven years," Clarkson tells Parade magazine of her love life before she met and married Brandon Blackstock. "Every Christmas, it was like, 'Seriously, I'm still pathetically alone? Awesome. I'm still telling people I'm okay with it? I'm not.'"

The pop singer, who is promoting her new Christmas album Wrapped in Red, admitted she only had three boyfriends until she wed Blackstock. In fact, in 2011 she told USA TODAY she'd "never been in love."

"I've never experienced certain things, and I think that's because I have this side of me that is shut off," she said at the time. "Because I haven't found anybody yet to open to that I feel like, 'OK, you're worth breaking down that wall for.' I've never found that."

Fast forward to her wedding day. "I bawled like a baby," she told Parade. "We both wrote our own vows, and it was hard to get through them, but I did it â?¦ Brandon was like, 'The Notebook ain't got nothin' on me -- come on!' And he took me out [on the lake] in a rowboat. It was very sweet. The whole thing was perfect."